Friday, September 16, 2005

Rove's Last Leak

There are too many leaks . . . in Washington. If there's leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.

-- President G.W. Bush, October 2003

Courtesy of Zemblan patriot J.M., Lloyd Grove explains how God, that mordant punster, has done what Bush would not:

There were not only logistical and bureaucratic troubles but, astonishingly for the Bush White House, political snafus [during Hurricane Katrina]. Maybe there's a simple explanation: Karl Rove's kidney stones.

Washington insiders have been buzzing that President Bush's guru-in-chief - often called "Bush's Brain" - has been suffering from the painful urinary-tract malady for the past couple of weeks, causing him to miss some key Katrina strategy sessions.

I'm told that the 54-year-old deputy White House chief of staff - who apparently was feeling well enough yesterday to travel outside the nation's capital - visited the hospital, possibly twice, to relieve his agony since Labor Day.

White House officials declined to speak on the record about Rove's kidney stones, due to the extreme delicacy of discussions about internal organs of top presidential advisers.

But the National Institutes of Health define a kidney stone as "a hard mass developed from crystals that separate from the urine and build up on the inner surfaces of the kidney. ... Usually, the first symptom of a kidney stone is extreme pain, which occurs when a stone acutely blocks the flow of urine. ... Sometimes nausea and vomiting occur. Later, pain may spread to the groin" . . . .

DeFrank added: "Karl may be a certified political genius, but there's no way he could be in a meeting dispensing advice to anybody. The only thing he could dispense would be low, pitiable moans."

UPDATE: In other medical news, Vice President Dick Cheney will have surgery next weekend to correct that nasty bulge in his pants:

The condition, discovered earlier this year during a routine checkup, needs to be treated "as to not become a problem over time," Steve Schmidt, counselor to the vice president, said Friday.

"The procedure will be performed under local anesthetic," Schmidt said. "It will take place next weekend. It will involve a short hospital stay. The vice president will return to work shortly thereafter."